Many medical students look forward to an initial encounter with patients unless they have prior experience as nurses, assistants or hospital volunteers. Most of them are younger than Konner with naïve energy that overcomes timidity or lack the fear older students have. He recalled a younger student who sympathetically said "tough break" to start talking with a young quadriplegic while Konner worried about what to say and said nothing. He learned the patients almost always want doctors to speak to them. First-year students have initial clinical experiences in small hospital group settings. The group Konner accompanied was led by an immigrant neurologist physician who insisted on the instruction "Touch the patient." Their first stop was at a middle-aged moaning woman where a third-year medical student inserted a needle into the restrained and frail woman. Konner took her hand, brushed back her hair...